Seijiro Tomita was awarded USD30.2 million in compensatory damages by a federal jury in New York in a patent infringement lawsuit against Nintendo Co. This is in relation to a technology patent that he developed for providing 3-D images without using 3-D glasses. Tomita’s attorney, Joe Diamante, told the jury that the technology developed by Tomita, a longtime ex-employee of Sony Corp, was used by Nintendo in its 3DS.
However, defense attorney for Nintendo Corp, Scott Lindvall, argued that the 3DS does not use the key aspects of the patent. Tomita cited in his argument of a meeting held in 2003 with Nintendo’s officials which Lindvall refuted, saying that the cited meeting was one of the many meetings that Nintendo had held with vendors selling glasses-less 3-D display technology.
Tomita, 58, sued Nintendo and its U.S. for patent infringement in 2011. He was not present in the courtroom on Wednesday. “We are thankful to the jurors for their diligence and hard work,” Diamante said in an e-mail after the verdict. “It has been a honor to represent Mr. Tomita and to protect his invention.” Lindvall declined to comment following the verdict. Nintendo officials were not immediately available for comment.
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